LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      “More snow on the way.” The truck driver, a fifty-something guy in insulated pants and a plaid flannel shirt, fiddled with the radio dial.

      The man in the passenger seat made a low sound in his throat, a sound of agreement that discouraged further conversation. He had a killer headache. Talking only made it ache all the harder. And he kept smelling alcohol.

      He sniffed the sleeve of his jacket. Definitely. Booze. Was he drunk? He didn’t feel drunk, exactly. He just felt bad. Bad all over.

      The two-lane road, dangerously slick in spots, treated with road salt and dotted with slushy ridges of brown snow, twisted and turned down the mountain. Piled snow, hard-packed and dirty, rose in twin walls to either side, so the big rig seemed to roll through a dingy white tunnel, a tunnel rimmed above with evergreens and roofed higher still by a steel-colored sky.

      The passenger shut his eyes, tuned out the drone of the radio and leaned his pounding head against the seatback. For a while, he dozed. When he opened his eyes again, the walls of snow on either side had diminished. He spotted a sign that said this road was Scenic Highway 49.

      With a hydraulic moan and hiss, the trucker slowed the rig as they came to a sharp turn. Another turn after that and they were slowing even more.

      They passed an intersection, a road winding off into the tall trees, and then another. The passenger read the street sign at that second road: Rambling Lane. And Main Street. They were on Main Street. The two-lane highway had now become the central street of some hole-in-the-wall town.

      Another turn in the road and they were rolling past a town hall and a one-room post office on the right. On the left, a café and a mountain bike shop and a store called Fletcher Gold Sales, followed by a couple of tourist-trap gift shops. The place was like something out of an old western movie—or maybe, thought the passenger, like a small town in Texas, except with everything crowded together and tall mountains all around.

      Texas. The passenger frowned. Am I from Texas? No answer came to him. His head pounded harder.

      “Welcome to North Magdalene, California, population two-thirty on a very busy day,” said the driver, as he pulled the rig into a parking lot across from a restaurant called The Mercantile Grill, which was next-door to a bar fittingly named The Hole in the Wall. The hydraulic brakes sighed as they rolled to a stop in a long space surrounded by piles of gray snow. The driver flipped levers and worked the big gearshift. Finally, the huge truck was silent. “It’s lunchtime and I skipped breakfast.” The trucker scratched his chin. “I’m heading up the street to the café, get a quick burger to go, fill my thermos. Then I’m on to Grass Valley. I figure, just a little bit of luck and I’ll make it before the road shuts down.”

      The passenger frowned. “Shuts down?”

      The

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